Is it a better idea to have two breeding pens for each breed of chicken you want to breed, or would one be ok? I want so many haha I plan to have one roo covering 10 hens In each breeding pen. It will be a 5x12 coop and a 5x40 run. I want to have 16 of these for different breeds of chicken and ducks(5 ducks 1 drake) then two breeds of Turkey that will have 10x40 runs with 5 hens and 1 Tom. Then there would be a 10x12 supply/brooder/incubator room, and a 10x12 rabbit colony attached to a 10x40 run as well. These are all just big dreams but better to plan now on what I would like to do.
I was originally going to have two pens for each breed, but if I could I would like to have more breeds and color variants instead.
So having more pens of the same breed to control outcome would be better than multiple breeds. Phooey, time to figure out what breeds I really want.
There is a lot more to breeding chickens than most people think. There are many other traits, appearance traits and production traits, that make a bird part of its breed. Most *breeders* are really just propagators. They throw a rooster in with some hens and hope for some pretty feather dusters to hatch out. It's not that easy. Orumpoultry is quite right about quality and quantity. Hatcheries breed for quantity, not quality. Most *breeders* out there breed for quantity, and pretty feathers, not quality. Breeding for quality is more difficult and time consuming.
You have to do a good bit of research on not just the breed, but the variety that you choose. You have to get to know the quirks of your breed, the quirks of your variety, and the quirks of your own birds. It's work. There is simply too much to know and do if you are looking to raise good quality poultry when you have a number of different breeds/varieties.
You also need a standard to breed towards, so that you have defined characteristics and goals for the birds to meet. Otherwise, you are going to have a flock of birds that are not uniform in appearance,production, or even personality traits. How can you know if you are reaching a quality level or a particular goal if you don't have a standard that you work towards with your breeding selections?
True breeding isn't just throwing in a rooster with some hens. It is examining your birds and making breeding choices so that the offspring will hopefully maintain its best traits and improve on the other traits. No bird is perfect, so you have to make breeding decisions to try to mate a bird with a flaw to another bird that doesn't have that flaw, so hopefully the offspring will come up looking just right. This does not occur when you just throw any old bird together to mate.
As far as having one or two pens per breed/variety - personally I don't like to stick with just one male. With our breed, which is rare and doesn't have many bloodlines that go way far back in time, I don't want to further narrow the gene pool down too fast, because then you can start seeing too many problems from serious inbreeding. Poultry can take more inbreeding than other animals, and inbreeding is a part of poultry breeding, but I don't like to cut it that close by only breeding from 1 cock and 2 hens. Some people prefer to cut their breeders down to such a small number and it works for them. We prefer to go a little slower with making our improvements to the flock, by making sure to have at least two cocks to breed with. Since we don't have the time or housing to hatch a hundred or more chicks per year, which is what many breeders recommend, it makes even more time to make improvements. But we have seen actual improvements in just a few years, so we aren't worried about keeping up with those folks that hatch hundreds of chicks per year. Not to mention the fact that our breed was pretty much neglected for 100 years and nearly went extinct just after the turn of the 20th century. Realistic expectations are also a key factor in breeding and raising poultry.
We only breed one kind of chicken. We have more than one color variety but right now we focus on one particular color because the other color we have isn't the best quality in appearance and we've been unable to fix the flaws, so we need to get some better quality stock to work with in that particular color. The folks we got one color from were more focused on egg production rather than on appearance and having a well-rounded bird. The birds lay a little better than our other color, but they don't look nearly as good when you stand them next to the other variety. And if they were in a mixed flock, you would not be able to tell for sure what breed they are because the people that bred them did not breed them to their breed Standard, so they have a more generic body type than the typical body type for their breed. It's a balancing game if you are going to breed to any type of standard, and it's even more of a balancing act when you try to breed for both appearance and production traits.
And you have to have the right expectations for your birds. Dual purpose birds are never going to be as productive in one area as a bird meant just for one utility purpose. You can push for improvement, but there is only so much that the breed will be able to accomplish. And if you choose to push appearance over production, then you may lose quality in the area of production, same thing if you push production to be better, then you lose quality in appearance.
We breed to the breed Standard as well as for production - because they are dual purpose utility birds meant to be useful, not just pretty feathers. This means we are asking a LOT of our birds, and so it is much slower going to fix the flaws they have and keep the good traits they have, because we aren't just focusing on how they look, but also how they perform as far as laying, and as far as maturing and having meat on them.
I can't imagine trying to breed more than one breed of chicken and become good at it. It's all we can do to keep up with our one breed and multiple color varieties. And we have added turkeys to our place this year, so we've got another big learning curve to get to know the turkeys' quirks. Serious breeding is rewarding, but it is not for the faint of heart.
The American Poultry Association is the *poultry police* who publishes the book of breed Standards. The Standard of Perfection (SOP) has the criteria for what the different breeds and varieties should look like. Many people complain that *show birds* don't produce well, but the APA believes that poultry should be more than just pretty feather dusters and if they are a bird meant for some utility use, they want people to also breed for production. They have finally realized that many *show people* pay too much attention to appearance only, so they are trying to regroup and start emphasizing production as well as appearance. I would recommend that you get an SOP so that you know what your breed Standard is. And if you choose birds that also have a utility purpose, the Livestock Conservancy has good info on what to look for and how to examine your birds, to help improve/maintain production.
I was originally going to have two pens for each breed, but if I could I would like to have more breeds and color variants instead.
